Coachella 2014 and a rock critic of a certain age: Larry Wilson

Of course it does. Just ask Paul Westerberg, leader of The Replacements, which at various times over the last 35 years — yeesh! — has been my favorite still-punky post-punk rock band. Geniuses of drunken sentimental rebellion straight through from “Sorry, Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash” in 1981 to “All Shook Down,” recorded as the band imploded in 1990.

Several of The Replacements are dead or infirm, and ol’ Paul is now in his mid-50s, and Friday night at the Coachella Music and Arts Festival out here in the desert, he was nursing a very bad back, and had to install a couch on the stage where he sat most of the time and sang and played his guitar, wearing some kind of Army-fatigue jumpsuit, while his bandmates for this happy-enough reunion bounced around onstage and wore matching suits plaid suits and bow ties like proper ironic rockers.

Age? It had laid Paul out, to the point where most of the set was actually headlined by a replacement Replacement, Billie Joe Armstrong of really post-punkers Green Day, a man 13 years younger than ol’ Paul. His band was never to my taste, nor to that of the rabid ‘Mats fans who like myself had pushed to the front of the crowd so we could be a few feet away for the most-anticipated reunion at this year’s Coachella.

“World’s best Replacements cover band,” ol’ Paul called the set-up. Except young Billie had to learn some of the songs onstage. “Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it,” original bassist Tommy Stinson called out. “It’s in E, like all the others.”

Many of my new friends around me last night were ... of a certain age, relatively speaking. Thirties and 40s, say. We sang out in unison with ol’ Paul on his “Alex Chilton”: “I’m in love. What’s that song? I’m in love with that song.”

But I am older than either ol’Paul and Billie Joe and all my new fan-friends and ... most everybody at Coachella. That’s partly why I went this year, for the first time. Just to see if there were any other old guys there. At first, as we stood in line for the ritual pat-down among tens of thousands of festival-arrivers here on the polo fields of Indio, I didn’t see a soul the wrong side of 25. We got into the beer tent and I bought my 23-year-old daughter Julia and her same-aged fiance Marcus a Heineken and, same deal — looked like a party on Fraternity Row at USC, cubed and then cubed again. They went off in search of the electronic music they listen to and I wandered the massive grounds. Unlike, well, Woodstock or Isle or Monterey Pop, which, thank you very much, I was a little too young for, the beat is everywhere at a Coachella, not just from the main stages but from a dozen tents where house, dub, step, whatever you call that bass-heavy trance dance music now, throbs. So I just put in my foam ear plugs and wandered, taken back to my days as a youthful rock critic, taking it all in.

Had an ale from the Eagle Rock Brewery in the craft beer corner. Had an olive-oil ice cream cone from a Portland purveyor. Beer and food: Much better than in my day!

Caught Haim, the three San Fernando Valley sisters in their 20s, who play guitar rock and yet drew a big crowd of their own age. So cute and overwhelmed: “It’s really crazy to be here,” says the one sister, with real tears in her eyes, “‘cause we’ve been coming to the last 10” Coachellas on their own and ... here they were playing to thousands. “OK, no more emotions. My sisters and I like to jam.” And then she broke into, of all things, the blues-based opening guitar chords to Peter Green’s “Oh Well” from that entirely different Fleetwood Mac of 1969, a tune older than most of the crowd’s parents. You know the song if you listened to either rock radio in the ‘70s or to nostalgia radio now: “Can’t help about the shape I’m in / Can’t sing, I ain’t pretty and my legs are thin. But don’t ask me what I think of you / I might not give the answer that you want me to.”

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If this is what it’s come to, down the years, that’s all right with me. White English kids in the ‘60s rediscovered the black American blues and made a whole new music culture from it. Kids their grandchildren’s age are now covering that mash up, making it new again. There isn’t any doubt now that rock ‘n’ roll will go on forever, that it will live, that is, once all the people like me have died. Couldn’t ask for more than that, in a way: to know a big part of your life wasn’t some passing fad.

Finally found all those people like me late in the evening in the Mojave tent. Though I had only seen four or five gray-hairs in my whole day of wandering, somehow a couple of thousand had gathered to hear and see Bryan Ferry, the elegant Roxy Music crooner

who led by far my favorite rock band back when I wrote criticism. Ferry is 68, a Commander of the British Empire ... and I am happy to report that he still rocks like nobody’s business. No act in any musical genre could finish a concert more strongly that Ferry and his hot band did Saturday night: Roxy’s screaming “Editions of You” from 1973 followed by his quiet, emotional version of John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy.” Amazing. The ups and downs of these two songs hold in them a lifetime of sorrow and joy. Forever young, if you want it. Ferry’s lyrics from back then in “Editions” are still the watchwords for a life to be lived without the artificial constructs of age, especially when you are comfortable with whatever your own may be:

“So love me, leave me, do what you will. Who knows what tomorrow might bring? Learn from your mistakes is my only advice, and stay cool is still the main rule. Don’t play yourself for a fool.”

Larry Wilson is a member of the editorial board of the Los Angeles News Group. larry.wilson@langnews.com